Editing Objects and Items

APRS Objects and Items are tracked assets that are not transmitting radio stations. As such, some station has to transmit information on behalf of these objects. The Object editor is invoked either by right-clicking on the map and selecting Create Object (for a new object) or Update Object (to modify the information of an existing object or take over ownership of an object or no-longer-transmitting station). Similarly, right-clicking on a row in the Station/Object list gives the choice of updating the selected object.

The Object editor window allows you to enter the following parameters for an object; the entered data will be correctly formatted according to the APRS protocol specification as an Object or Item report, depending on whether the object is timestamped or not.

Name	The globally unique identifier for the object. Note that if you are updating an object or station, the name is not editable and is pre-initialized to the existing name of the object or station.
Object active	Specifies whether the object report should show the object as "live" or "killed". Killed object reports will automatically stop re-transmitting after 3 transmissions (to ensure everyone hears that the object is no longer relevant.
Latitude and longitude	The geographical position of the object. When the editor is invoked from the map, the position on the map that was right-clicked will be the initial position of a new object.
Scope	The span of interest of an object. Objects can be private (only visible on this station and not transmitted), local (not repeated through the APRS-IS backbone), or global (allowed to be sent to APRS-IS).
Permanent	Specifies whether the object is reported with a Object Report timestamped at the time of editing, or with a non-timestamped Item Report (permanent).
Symbol and overlay	Specifies the symbol code to be transmitted in the object messages, and any overlay character for alternate symbol table symbols.
Speed and course	The speed and direction of travel of a moving object. If the speed is set to zero, speed and course will not be included in the object reports.
Area type, color, and offset	Used only for symbol type Area (\l) to specify the shape, color, size, and relative position of an identified geographical area.
Signpost	The text to appear on a Signpost (\m) symbol.
Monitor frequency, duplex direction, and subaudible tone	Used only for the Antenna (/r) symbol and the various Repeater symbols ( W& A0 E0 I0 W0 Da Ya ) to identify the tuning parameters for a repeater station.
Comment	Arbitrary free text to be appended after all the protocol-specific information.
Digipeat paths	The digipeater path or paths that should be used to transmit this object. If more than one path is specified, proportional pathing will be used in the order of preference specified.
Initial object repeat rate	The time in seconds between the initial transmissions of the object report before decay begins. Note that edits to an existing object will cause transmission to begin again at the initial rate (to ensure everyone promptly hears about the update).
Decay ratio	The proportion by which the transmission interval will be increased after every cycle through the proportional digipeat paths, until it reaches the slow repeat rate.
Slow repeat rate	The longest interval between transmissions of this object, as infrequent as decay is allowed to make it.
QRU group membership	The QRU information group this object belongs to. If a non-blank group name is specified, every time this station hears a QRU message asking for that group of information from a station within the range limit (default or explicitly specified by the requesting station), this station will report all members of the group locally known. The list is pre-populated with standard QRU group names, but you may enter a custom group name if you choose. The standard QRU group names are: group name meaning AMBU ambulance CLUB ham radio club ECHO Echolink FIRE fire station FOOD restaurants FUEL gas/petrol stations HOSP hospitals LIFEBOAT lifeboats LTHS lighthouses POLI police stations POST post offices RD13 D-Star 13cm repeaters RD23 D-Star 23cm repeaters RD2M D-Star 2m repeaters RD3C D-Star 3cm repeaters RD70 D-Star 70cm repeaters RP10 analog 10m repeaters RP13 analog 13cm repeaters RP23 analog 23cm repeaters RP2M analog 2m repeaters RP3C analog 3cm repeaters RP6M analog 6m repeaters RP70 analog 70cm repeaters RT13 television 13cm repeaters RT23 television 23cm repeaters RT3C television 3cm repeaters SRAIL steam railroad STOR Amateur Radio stores T2SRV approximate locations of Tier 2 APRS-IS servers VETE veterinarians WOTA Wainwrights On The Air peaks

Once the parameters are edited, clicking the OK button will save the changes and start transmitting the object with its current parameter settings. Clicking the Send button will also save the changes and start transmitting them, but will keep the editor window open so the same object (or a different new object) can be edited.